Snakes' Elbows Read Online Free Page B

ever eaten in my whole life.’
    As time went on, the guests’ manners began to slip. They dipped their fingers in the liquid chocolate of the fountains and licked them, then their whole hands. They dived head first into the rose bushes and gorged themselves on the chocolate flowers. Instead of reachingup into the branches to pull a single pear or apple made of chocolate, they climbed up into the trees and shook them until dozens of fruits tumbled into the grass below. The two dogs watched in dismay to see how greedy people can be, as the guests snapped off whole arms and legs from the statues and crept away to guzzle them alone. By this time some of them were even being sick behind the bushes because they had eaten so much.
    â€˜Tee hee! This will be a lark!’
    Before Cannibal and Bruiser knew what was happening, some guests had sneaked up behind them, grabbed them and Splash! – thrown them in the fountains.
    â€˜Help! Help!’ Cannibal cried to his friend as he struggled not to sink in the basin of hot white chocolate. But there was nothing Bruiser could do, because she was thrashing around in the fountain that was full of hot dark chocolate. ‘Don’t open your mouth! Don’t swallow any and whatever you do, don’t lick yourself!’
    With enormous difficulty the two dogs eventually managed to heave themselves out of the fountains, but not before they were both completely covered in chocolate. How Jasper and the guests howled with laughter to see them, one white and one plain! And then they simply walked away and forgot about them. Cannibal and Bruiser felt the chocolate harden around them.
    â€˜It’s as if I’m turning to stone,’ Cannibal said. ‘There’s nothing we can do but wait for someone to come and help us,’ Bruiser replied.
    The night went on and the mad party finally came to an end. The last chocolate-crazed guest departed and Jasper went to his bed, tired but happy. By that time the chocolate coating on the two dogs had set solid and they couldn’t budge an inch. It was the following morning before some servants, cleaning up the terrible mess in the garden, came upon Cannibal and Bruiser and took pity on them. They carried the dogs into the kitchen and set them eachin turn above a pot of warm water until the chocolate began to melt and drip off them, until each of them was standing in a pool of liquid chocolate and was free again. ‘That does it,’ Cannibal said as soon as he had recovered. ‘I’ve had enough of Jasper Jellit.’
    â€˜Don’t worry, we’ll get our own back on him for this, in our own time, in our own way,’ Bruiser added. ‘Just see if we don’t!’

6 Dandelion
    The arrangement that Wilf should work for Barney went brilliantly right from the start. At the end of the first week, the men from the Woodford Trumpet came back and this time it wasn’t Barney who received them.
    Plooff! Wilf managed to cover his face just in time. The journalist tried to put his nicely shod foot in the door again, but Wilf was faster and stronger than Barney and slammed it closed.
    â€˜Oi! That hurt!’ the man yelped out on the step, and then he began to hammer and bang angrily on the door. ‘Who do you think youare anyway? Open up. It’s Mr Barrington I want to talk to.’
    â€˜He doesn’t want to talk to you. Go away.’ Wilf knelt down, lifted up the flap and peeped through the letterbox.
    Plooff!
    â€˜I’m looking after Mr Barrington now. Go away,’ he said again. ‘You heard me. Hoppit.’
    Standing at the top of the stairs, Barney was listening to all of this. His heart was thumping, but he knew he was safe. He didn’t know what he was most grateful for: Wilf’s wonderful cooking or the way he protected him from people like the men from the Woodford Trumpet.
    *
    The following morning Wilf brought Barney his breakfast as usual. On the trolley he